She loved watching their eyes as they began to figure out that they had no hope. She could never tell anyone this, of course. Others wouldn’t understand the source of her pleasure, although she was sure that she wasn’t alone. Pakvar here, for instance, killed for pleasure. She was sure of it. But the crowds that she normally ran with were more… proper. Thus, she had to keep these moments of inner delight to herself.
The two men Pakvar had brought with him were doing fine without her help, so she could sit. Their prisoner was suspended naked in midair by a rope tied to the rafters of the half-finished building. His wrists bound, his body dipped into the empty fifty-five-gallon polyethylene drum. His mouth was taped shut.
They all wore protective clothing and safety glasses and had access to gas masks.
With all of the construction in Dubai, it was easy to find a location. There was one man in the hallway, monitoring the elevators and stairways. But this high up, visitors wouldn’t be a problem. They had shut off the security cameras just prior to arrival. This floor of the building was unfinished. The floor-to-ceiling windows that would make up the exterior of the skyscraper were absent. It gave the impression of being up in the clouds. While their floor was expansive, it fell off into the air like an infinite pool, dozens of stories up. The wind would help with the ventilation.
Pakvar’s men handed out gas masks. They even placed one on their prisoner, removing the tape over his mouth.
Lena stood, looking at the man. She put one finger over her lips to indicate that he was to remain quiet.
Pakvar’s men had four hot plates set up. They were using industrial-sized cooking pots — unpressurized. This meant that they would only be able to get the lye to just above boiling. That was okay, but the process would take longer. The bottles had large red-and-yellow warning markings on them. The men poured the liquid into the large pots and heated it until just above boiling.
Lena spoke to the prisoner. “I want you to answer some questions. If you do this, you will live. If you do not answer my questions, or if I think you are lying to us, I will begin pouring the lye into this drum. It will be very unpleasant.” Pakvar had put his phone down. He stood behind her, arms crossed.
The naked prisoner nodded.
“Do you work with the Americans?”
No movement.
She put a glove on, walked over to one of the pots of boiling liquid, and carefully carried it over to the fifty-five-gallon drum. Pakvar took the other side and the poured the liquid into the drum. It sloshed around the bottom and began to coat his feet.
The man screamed inside his mask.
Lena said, “This is a highly basic liquid. Do you know what that means? If you understand chemistry, you will know that a very strong base can dissolve your flesh.”
The prisoner’s eyes were streaming with tears. Through the mask he said, “Please let me go.”
Lena tilted her head, smiling under her mask. “The process is much more effective if you can heat the lye to at least three hundred degrees Fahrenheit. We are heating up gallons of it. After all, we don’t want this to take all day.”
She held her hand out to the boiling vats. The Iranian men stood staring back at them, their eyes impassive. Pakvar looked at his watch.
Lena’s heart beat faster. She enjoyed the chase, but it appeared that this would be a quick victory. This man was clearly broken. “Do you work for the Americans?”
He nodded and whimpered. “Yes.”
“What were you going to give them?”
“An external hard drive. With data from the Dubai Financial Exchange. Where I work. It would give them access to transactional data, so they could see where the money is flowing.”
“Who were you going to provide this information to?”
“I don’t know him by name. I just know the time and location where we were supposed to meet.”
“Where is this hard drive now?”
“It is in my apartment. Under my bed, in a box.”
“Is it locked?”
He nodded. “Yes. The key is on my key chain.”
She looked over at the Iranian men. One of them walked behind the set of hot plates and grabbed one of several duffle bags. Inside the bags were all of the contents from his apartment, which they had removed in the early morning. The Iranian man came back with the box and a key.
Lena said, “This is it?”
The prisoner nodded. He yelled, “It burns my feet! Please make it stop burning!”
She peered over the top of the drum, seeing his feet, red and slimy. The basic solution was eating through his skin. His toes were a bloody mass.
“Please listen. Is this all of the information? There are no copies?”
He said, “Yes. That’s everything. The Americans didn’t want me to make any copies.”
She looked at Pakvar. He opened the small wooden box. It looked like a jewelry case. He removed the lone object inside, the external hard drive. Then he walked fifty feet away, near an open window, and removed his mask. He took out a laptop from his pack and booted it up, then plugged in the hard drive to the laptop.
Pakvar held his phone to his ear. He said, “It’s me. I’m logging in now. I need you to check something out. Let me know if it’s everything we need, or if you think there is more.”
Lena looked back at their prisoner. This was everything. She could tell by the fear in his eyes. He was giving them all that he knew. He would sell his own mother right now.
They waited in silence. Pakvar holding the phone. The other two Iranians cooking the lye. Everyone wearing gas masks. The prisoner crying, naked — his fat hairy chest heaving. Bloody toes swirling in the pool of reddening hot sludge below.
At last, Pakvar said, “Okay. We’ll call you if we need anything else.”
He pressed the screen and placed the phone back in his pocket. He looked at Lena. “Natesh thinks we’re good. He said that this should be it.”
“That was quick.” She smiled and looked back at her prey. “As much as I would love to stay, I have to leave.” Then she turned to Pakvar. “Please take the bags of his belongings and burn them. Not here. Finish questioning him and don’t leave any evidence.”
Pakvar looked at the man and grinned. “Time to finish our work here. The nice lady is leaving.” The only noise in the room was the sound of the boiling liquid and the sobbing man.
He looked at Lena and said, “Please, will you let me go? You said that if I cooperated, you would let me go.”
She smiled and tilted her head. “Yes, I did say that. But you see, in my position, sometimes I have to tell lies in order to tease out the truth. I am most sorry.”
He cried harder. He said, “Why are you doing this?”
She took a deep breath. She looked thoughtful. “To help forge a better world.”
Then Lena winked at the soon-to-be-dead man and walked out.
A part of her wanted to stay and watch. The part of her that no one could understand. The next pot would get the liquid up to midcalf. It would be excruciating pain. But pretty soon after that the blood would begin to drain from his upper extremities and he would lose consciousness. All the fun would be over. Alas, she just didn’t have the time.
Chapter 8
“Are you alright?”
“I will be.”
Chase took another sip from his glass. Lisa had arrived at his hotel fifteen minutes ago. They were done with work for the day, and he was in need of something to take his mind off what he had seen.
He stood in the pool, the water chest-high, his arms laid out over the white-and-gold mosaic tile on the edge. He held his glass with both hands. She sat down on the rim of the pool next to him, wearing a black halter swim dress and looking great in it.
They sat there for a while, not saying anything. He directed a thousand-yard stare into the ocean. Chase was glad for the quiet. He was disturbed by what he had seen today and needed to be with someone. But he wanted to let the alcohol and the cool pool water do its work on him a little while longer before they talked about it.